Blaine stared at the image on Kurt's lock screen. Out of all of the people in the world, it was Kurt. No wonder he looked so familiar. He could see it all now. His eyes, even though they were a different color, were just as striking as hers. While she definitely looked more like her mother, if his assumptions were correct, you could tell she was her father's daughter. That whole time he was thinking how perfectly her appearance fit with him and Tony, when the whole time it was fate playing a heartbreaking game of love lost and found.

Blaine did not fault him, was not mad, and was hurt no longer than a few minutes after Kurt's sudden outburst. More than anything else he wished he knew what was going on in his brain so he could find a way to help him through it. Was this the reason why he looked so sad when he told him about Michi? He wanted to learn the whys and the hows of how they were in the situation they were now in. After about twenty minutes he pocketed the phone and headed to Brittany's to pick up his beautiful little girl.

oXoXo

"No. No – you have to have made a mistake. It's impossible." Santana backed away from Kurt slowly shaking her head. He was wrong. He had to be.

"No, I didn't it's her. San, she looks just like you. I would know her anywhere."

"How- But, I mean, out of all the people in the world- Blaine?"

"I don't know if I can do this San. We dreamed about this for the past four years, but now that it's here I don't know if I can."

"I miss her so, so much." It was an honest confession. Gone was the snarky, sarcastic Santana that Kurt knew well. In her place was the lost woman that he met for the first time years ago.

"Me too." He managed to choke out before the two broke down into a pile of hysterical sobs on the floor of their entryway. The held tight to each other's embrace willing the pain deep within their hearts and souls to cease.

Neither one knows how long they sat there whispering comforting nothings into each other's ears and wiping the others tears; but it was well into the night before Kurt picked himself up and helped Santana to her feet.

"Come on, let's go to bed. We'll call into work in the morning. Neither of us is going to be in any condition to work tomorrow."

"Yea." Kurt started walking to his room when Santana spoke again. "Hey, Kurt?"

"Yea Tan?"

"Can I sleep with you tonight? I really don't want to be alone."

"Of course, go get changed and wash your face. I'll be in bed."

Kurt quickly changed into his pajamas and splashed cold water on his face. He looked in the mirror and was too emotionally exhausted to even care about the face that looked back at him. His eyes were red and swollen; his skin had splotches coving it. Nightly routine be damned, today he just didn't even have the energy to care. He had no plans on leaving his bed the next day anyway.

Kurt went to his coat to get his phone to charge it. He started panicking as he searched though all of the pockets and emptied the entire contents of his satchel onto the ground. "Shit!"

"What happened?"

"I left my phone at the caf�. He has my phone."

"And I said this was all fate." Santana scoffed. "If it is she's a real fucking bitch." She paused for a second and regained her bearings. "Or maybe a God-send, I haven't decided which one yet."

"We'll worry about it in the morning. Come on let's go to sleep."

The pair crawled under the covers and Santana curled into the crook of Kurt's shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. Slowly they fell into a light, restless sleep; all the while hoping that the morning would bring clarity.

oXoXo

It took three days for Kurt to finally clear his head enough to go get his phone back and talk to Blaine. Three days full of emotional, internal battles, his head and his heart dueling out emotions that he never even dreamed that he would have to internalize.

In the end he decided to go with his heart, deep in his mind he knew that he didn't deserve to even know how she was, he had given her away, he had abandoned her. But his heart wanted to know so desperately. His heart has not yet healed, after all the years, nor forgiven himself for signing on the dotted line.

No part of him, or Santana, wanted to give her away. But there were situations out of their control, coupled with the fact that they were only sixteen at the time made the decision for them.

"I don't think I can do it. How am I just supposed to kiss her goodbye and look the other way as they take her from my arms – from our arms – and give her to some stranger?"

"Tan, I don't want to either, but there is no way we can support her. Your parents kicked you out, since my dad is sick there is barely enough money to keep his mortgage paid. There is no way that we can raise her right now, it's not fair to her."

"But what if – what if this is our only chance? What if she's it?"

"What is meant to be will be. If we are meant to have children the universe will find its way to make it happen. But we have to think of her, she will have a family who can love and support her, do all the things that we can't do for her."

"But, I love her so much."

"I know. So do I, this is not easy for me. My heart is in a million pieces because I have to say goodbye to her."

"God, I'm going to miss her."

"Me too, Tan. Me too."

"Maybe one day she will come back to us."

"Maybe." He whispered as the tears continued to fall. He and Santana sat curled in the Hummel's couch, all four arms clutching Santana's belly wishing that their reality was different. Wishing that instead of planning their goodbyes, they would be planning their welcome home.

The memory replayed over and over in Kurt's mind on his subway ride to the doctor's office. He had left the office early, citing that he had some research to do and would be better able to get it done in the peace and quiet of his own home. His boss knew that something was off with him for the past several days, and even though she knew he wasn't telling the complete truth, she trusted him enough to know it was something serious.

Kurt stared blankly at the passing stops from midtown to Brooklyn, driven solely on autopilot as his stomach tried to come out of his throat. He had never been more anxious in his life. His mind reverted to the memories of being entirely captivated by Santana's growing belly. He spent hours upon hours, cuddled close with it feeling every movement he possibly could and talking to it. He would talk to the baby like she could hear him, telling her how much he loved her and how he always would, no matter what the situation. To this day, in his darkest moments, he would still feel phantom kicks against the palms of his hand. It was one of the reasons that the doctor's put him on antidepressants. They helped mask the pain, while never quite taking it away fully. They made him able to function and have moments that weren't plagued with self-doubt, fear, and regret.

He paused in front of the medical building and sat on the bench outside for a moment. He tried to collect himself, but all he managed to do was start crying again. This time it wasn't just regret, it was the fact that the man who is raising his daughter is right inside of that building. He had been so close to her, yet so far away for the past few years. He wanted, no he needed, to know how she was. But who is to say that Blaine would even want anything to do with him? The thought of that broke him down into sobs. Why would someone like Blaine want anything to do with Kurt, the boy who abandoned his own child? What if he didn't want him to have anything to do with her? What is her name anyway?

He was so consumed by his thoughts that he didn't even notice the blonde come out of the building, look at him, and quickly run back in.

oXoXo

Blaine sat in his office, door closed, honestly trying to get work done. Trying, and yet failing. It had been three days since Kurt ran out. Three days since his world got turned upside down. He was an emotional ball of mess; he could only imagine how Kurt must feel right now. He wanted to go to his house and beg him to talk, but he knew that was a bad idea. Kurt needed time to process everything. Hell, he needed time to process everything. That day's experience left him nothing but confused. He needed to know what happened. He needed to know how Kurt was. He needed to know if Kurt still liked him, if Kurt would still give him a chance. He would understand if he didn't but he just needed to know.

The door to his office flew in and he turned around ready to fire whoever had just burst into his office like a bat out of hell.

"What Kitty?"

"I'm sorry for just barging in here."

"Just get to the point." Blaine was obviously aggravated.

"Kurt's outside. He's sitting on the bench and he's crying."

"Thank you Kitty." The blonde retreated out of the room and back to doing whatever it was that she was going to do in the first place. Blaine quickly gathered his things and threw on his coat. He quickly called Gloria over the intercom while buttoning his jacket.

"Yes Blaine?"

"Hey Glor, I'm leaving can you finish up for today."

"Of course. Is everything okay?"

"Yea, I'll talk to you about it later."

"Okay, see you tomorrow."

He quickly disconnected the line and ran out of the office. He got up the outside stairs just as Kurt was standing, and collecting himself, to head down to the office.

"Kurt." He breathed out as he worked to catch his breath. Kurt took one look at him and began to cry once again. Without a second of hesitation he ran over and pulled the younger man into his arms and just held him tight as he waited for the sobs to cease and his breaths to even out. "Come on," he whispered, "why don't we go somewhere private."

"We-we can go b-back to my house." Kurt replied, hyperventilating slightly.

"Ok, lead the way." Kurt nodded, looking at the ground.

"Hey Kurt." Blaine said in attempt to get Kurt to look up at him.

"Yea?"

"Look at me." Kurt reluctantly lifted his head to meet Blaine's gaze. "Everything is going to be okay." Kurt just nodded with swollen eyes and looked away.

The entire subway ride accompanying walks were awkwardly silent. Both men were trying to figure out the words to say to each other. Even though this is all they had been thinking of for the past three days, all of a sudden none of the words that they wanted to say seemed right. By the time they finally got to Kurt and Santana's apartment, the tension could have been cut with a knife. Kurt took off his coat and his shoes, motioning for Blaine to follow suit. In silence, Kurt went to the refrigerator and took out two beers and sat on his couch. Blaine quickly took the seat next to him.

Kurt handed Blaine the beer as he began to sip on his own. Someone needed to speak, they couldn't keep this up. Blaine pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to Kurt.

"Here you go."

"Thanks." Kurt said in just above a whisper, still refusing to meet Blaine's eyes. He leaned over to pick the picture up that was on his coffee table. Staring at it, and tracing the tiny face that looked up at it, he finally decided to start the conversation. "You must think that I'm a horrible person."

Blaine immediately inched closer to Kurt resting his hand on his knee. "Oh my God, of course not, why would you think that?"

"Because I just abandoned my daughter – your daughter. I was selfish and just signed a paper practically dismissing her out of my life."

"Kurt, giving a child up for adoption is one of the most selfless things that a person could ever do. I would never think you, or anyone else, is a bad person for that. If anything I am grateful for you. You gave me the chance to be something that I never thought I'd be: a dad. I have always appreciated you, even before I knew it was you." Blaine wiped away a tear that trickled down Kurt's face. "Hey, come here. Why don't you talk to me? Tell me everything that you want me to know; because I honestly do want to know. All I could think about the last three days was you. I wanted to know everything about you. I knew from the moment I mentioned I had a daughter that there was something about me having a child that hurt you. It wasn't the 'I don't have time for a guy with a kid' look, it was something else entirely. There was an actual pain behind it. Then when I saw your lock screen on your phone I figured it out. I knew exactly why you got so upset. Now I just want to hear you talk about it."

Kurt held the picture to his chest and allowed the tears to fall once more. Blaine wrapped him in his arms and Kurt allowed the sound of his beating heart to soothe him slowly. After several minutes Kurt sat up and reached for his beer once more. After taking a long swig of his beer he curled into the corner diverting his eyes away from Blaine and keeping them on the picture he held so dear.

"I know you have to be thinking 'how in the world did she even happen'?" He half-heartedly chuckled. "Sometimes I ask myself the same thing." He quickly looked over at Blaine, who just nodded, gesturing for him to continue. "Well when I was around fifteen-ish, I had a really hard go at it. I mean, as you can probably tell, I'm obviously gay, like obviously. Don't get me wrong I am, for the most part, proud of who I am, but back then it was a different story. I never hid who I was, but I wasn't exactly out. The football team decided to make it their mission in life to torment me and bully me into coming out of the closet. After relentless teasing, slurs, being thrown into lockers and dumpsters I got tired of the shit. Santana tried to protect me the best she could, being the head cheerleader gave her power in the hierarchy of McKinley, but they would just wait until she wasn't around.

"I was talking to Santana about everything that was going on one day and she asked me how I knew I was gay if I never even had a girlfriend. At the time, I was a little thrown off, but now I realize where are that was coming from. Santana was, to put it nicely, promiscuous. People called her a whore behind her back, but it really wasn't that, she was lost, just trying to find herself. But anyway, off topic, I actually sat and thought about that question. After a while I figured 'you know what, she's right' so she offered to be my girlfriend. Who better else than your best friend? Both of us knew that we wouldn't break each other's hearts; we knew that it was nothing more than some sort of experiment, and I think Santana used it as a shelter of sorts. She had a boyfriend; she didn't have to keep pretending to be someone she wasn't everyone else.

"We dated for about a month or so, went out to dinner, watched movies, cuddled, honestly it was the same thing we did as friends, now there was this title accompanying it. Well, besides the kissing that we would do, that's definitely not something we did as friends. One night we were kissing and Santana decided to 'lend me her services'. She said that if I was going to figure this out, we were going to have to have sex.

"Ah, the logic of sixteen year olds. It really doesn't make sense when you look back on it.

"Well, the first time was completely awkward, it being my first time, and her being much more experienced than I was, but I enjoyed it. I mean, of course, sex is enjoyable, but it just wasn't right. We dated, fooled around, what have you for like the next month until it really came to me. As much as I loved Santana, I would never be in love with her. We sat down and talked that night and she agreed with me. It was a couple of weeks later that she came out to me and everything began to make sense.

"Over the next few weeks Santana was just off. She was tired all the time, bitchier than normal – yea can you imagine? -, and always was complaining about a really horrible taste in her mouth. When she came to me and told me she was late a couple of weeks after our 'break up' I was in shock. I mean, we had been safe, or so we thought. But now, that's neither here nor there. We had no idea what we were going to do after she took a test and it came back positive. We knew we were in no position to raise a child. But we had a few months to decide what to do.

"A month later my dad had a heart attack. He was in a coma for a week. I honestly thought I was going to lose him. That was one of the hardest times in my life. At that point he didn't even know about the baby, or even about me. I still had not yet come out to him. I thought he was going to die. That's when I first started spiraling into my depression." Kurt paused to compose himself and take another drink. He continued avoiding eye contact as he sighed and returned to his story.

"Dad survived the heart attack, but in doing a full work up at the hospital they found that he had prostate cancer. Yea, two blows within two weeks. Seriously, I was so completely lost at that time. There was a silver lining though, because of the heart attack and the full work up in the hospital they found it early. They did surgery and began radiation as soon as he was recovered enough after the heart attack. As pleased as I am now to say he is cancer free now, the months following the heart attack were horrible for our family. My dad was too weak to work at the shop, so even though he owned it, he had to pay out of his salary for someone to run it while he was sick. At the time there was barely enough money to keep the mortgage paid and food in the fridge. I can't tell you how many final notices we got.

"In that time Santana's parents found out about the pregnancy and kicked her out, so she came to live with us. It was then that we knew we had to give her up. We couldn't even take care of ourselves, how could we take care of a baby? We knew that we wanted her to have an amazing life. We also knew that we couldn't give that to her. We did not want to have to spend our days waiting in the social services office and having to look our daughter in the eyes and tell her that we couldn't give her the world because we could barely defend ourselves against it.

"My dad was supportive of our decision, I knew that if we wanted to keep her that he would have done everything in his power to help us, but I also knew that I couldn't put that kind of pressure on him. When the day finally came, when Santana went into labor was the worst day of my life. Well, both of our lives. When she was born we asked for a few hours with her before the social worker came in. They told us that it was a bad idea; that we shouldn't bond with her. But we needed it. We needed to say goodbye, my dad needed to say goodbye. We just needed to hold her if even just for a few hours."

Kurt broke down into sobs again as he relived the events of that afternoon. Blaine took Kurt's hand and held it tight and shifted his body, closing the distance between them. "Oh Blaine," Kurt choked out in between sobs. "You have to know that I never wanted to lose her. I wanted her, I really did. The biggest regret in my life was signing that paper. It was something that had to be done, we just couldn't-" Blaine pulled him close once again and rubbed Kurt's back as Kurt fought to regain control.

"I love her so much and I miss her. I m-miss her every single day. I have to keep m-myself m-medicated just to f-function. I hate myself for giving her away. I sp-p-pent every day for the last four and a half years missing her and thinking about her. Wondering where in the world she was, if she was happy, if I did-did the right thing. And it turns out that she's been s-so close, she's been with you, a couple of miles away from me for the past two and a half years. I've probably walked past her playing in the park. The w-worst part is that I would have never even noticed because it hurt too much to even look into the parks. I just looked at the ground and walked faster. I miss her. I miss her s-so fucking much."

By this point Kurt was emotionally exhausted and Blaine was fighting back tears of his own. He just listened to Kurt pour out his soul, and more than anything he wanted to make it better. The only way he had to make it better, he knew neither Kurt nor Santana was ready for, and he wasn't sure if he was ready for. There is one person in this world that Blaine puts before all others and that is his daughter. He had to look out for her best interest and at this point he wasn't sure what that was.

"Shhh, Kurt, I know you do. I couldn't imagine having to go through something like that. You are the strongest person I know." Blaine knew that words were not what Kurt needed in the moment so he just stayed there rubbing Kurt's back in silence until Kurt sat up once again.

"Will- will you tell me about her?"

"If you are sure you want to know, I'll tell you anything you like."

"What's her name?" Kurt looked pleadingly into Blaine's eyes.

"Well when we went to pick her up we were at a complete loss of what to name her. We always figured that the name would jump out at us the second we saw her. Yea, not so much. He wanted to name her Eliza, and I wanted nothing to do with that name. So, we asked the social worker if the birth parents – you- had named her."

"Her name –"

Blaine kept speaking, effectively, yet politely cutting Kurt off. "Is Liliana." Several more tears trickled down Kurt's face, but he refrained from sobbing. He just looked at Blaine's now glassed over eyes and silently begged him to keep speaking. "We thought that it was important to keep a little bit of, what I now know to be you, with her. We named her Liliana Elizabeth Anderson."

Now Kurt was in a state of shock, they had not given her a middle name. But, how? "Blaine, why the middle name?"

"You know I never figured that out. For some reason it just came to me, it just felt right. Why?"

"Elizabeth, that's my mother's name. She died when I was eight."

Blaine was shocked into silence and they just sat there staring at each other for several minutes. This lady named Fate kept coming back around again and again playing her game. After they both regained control of their emotions, Kurt had one more request for the day.

"Do you have a picture of her?"

"Of course, I brought one from home and have been keeping it with me for when you were ready. He got up and walked over to his briefcase. He pulled out, what appeared to be, a 4x6 and walked back over to the couch. He slowly handed it to Kurt who hesitated before looking.

"She's perfect." He whispered as his fingers traced her wavy dark brown hair that was blowing in the wind. Her honey brown eyes sparkled from the sunlight, and my God her smile, her smile captivated him. He could tell, even from just a picture, that it could light up a room.

"It was taken this summer at the office barbeque. She had just performed an original rendition, of 'Mine' by Taylor Swift." Kurt couldn't help but to laugh.

"That's one of Santana's favorite songs. My God, she looks so much like her."

"But she also looks like you."

"Can I keep this?"

"Absolutely."

"Blaine?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."